Data Trail will boost your Return On Investment – panel discussion

On the Digital Marketing Planet stage at the Digital Business World Congress in Madrid on 23 May 2018, I led a panel discussion on this very topical subject.

There is so much data available nowadays it can be difficult to know what to do with it, as there are many new and different ways for people to interact with your brand, 24-7.

Customers expect you to have a single view of them

They expect you to have a single view of all their interactions with you because they have a single view of them and they find it frustrating when you don’t. In the past you will have stored basic, static information about them in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

Today they share their behavioural and contextual data with you and this can provide you with insights into their ‘state’ as a customer with a clear idea of where they are on their journey with you.

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) now being law, people have far more control over their personal data and whether or not to share it with you.

Having a Data Trail brings insights to your business

The most important reason why you should build a Data Trail is because of the value and insights it will bring to your business, by building a single view of each and every one of your customers and all of the interactions they have with your brand.

The biggest companies struggle with this concept because they have historically focused on the product performance or channel and still work in silos, which often only gives them an incomplete view of the customer. All this is changing because of GDPR. This legislation will give customers and companies a single view of the personal data they share with each other.

Immediacy is a compelling concept for customers

We discussed the concept of “immediacy”, which could be an ‘action’ that is triggered by a change in a customer’s contextual or behavioural data. This ‘action’ can provide a better customer experience by providing more relevant and helpful information at the right time and does not necessarily have to happen immediately to have “immediacy”. This concept makes information to the recipient appear more important because it ‘appears to be happening’ or is ‘actually happening’.

Develop a single view of your customers

Gives you the opportunity to calculate where each customer is on their specific journey with with your company or brand, enabling you to anticipate their needs and trigger ‘actions’ they will find helpful and supportive.

If these ‘actions’ are provided at the right time and via the right channel you can save customers valuable time and effort. Even if you have thousands of customers this will make each one feel like an individual rather than a number.

If you have not done already, ensure your company has a single view of your customers. Focus on them as people not as data and you will learn to understand them better, build loyalty and drive more revenue from them.

Next steps

Read my 2018 top take-outs from Day One and Day Two at the Digital Marketing Planet. Then read my top actions for you to take to focus your digital marketing. Find out why it is worth attending the Digital Business World Congress in Madrid in May 2019.

The panel included these experts

I posed question to these three; Pablo Haya is director of Social Business Analytics at the Instituto de Ingenieria del Conocimiento (IIC) (Spain), Nacho Lafuente, CEO of Datumize (Spain) and Maciej Zawadzinski, CEO Piwik PRO (Poland).